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HP (Re-)Announces a 14" Android Laptop
PC Mag reports that an upcoming laptop from HP (one that was prematurely announced in April, and now official) has decent-to-good specs — under 4 pounds, battery life more than 8 hours, Tegra processor, and a 1928x1080 touch screen — but an unusual operating system, at least for a laptop. The SlateBook 14 will run Android, rather than Windows (or ChromeOS, for that matter), which helps keep it relatively cheap, at $400. According to the article, Android is "a lot cheaper for HP to implement in a laptop; ChromeOS, in contrast, comes with more stringent system requirements that would cost HP a bit more." Ars Technica's mention in April includes a screenshot taken from a video (note: video itself appears to be disabled) which shows the keyboard layout and which reveals some Android-specific changes. Update: 06/01 19:23 GMT by T : Here's an alternative link to the promotional video.
OK, a 14" phone. Just what we needed.
ChromeOS, in contrast, comes with more stringent system requirements that would cost HP a bit more.
In other words, this thing is going to be really slow if you try to use it for serious work. Why? Because HP is cheap and doesn't want to shell out for decent components. That and/or they like their locked down bootloader.
So lets pretend that we've just completed writing this code, as opposed to having just completed sabotaging it -Altera
I'm sorry a Tegra processor in a machine almost 4 Lbs? That is ridiculous. A tablet sized processor in a notebook sized body. Nobody will be foolish enough to buy that. Maybe a 1.2 pound machine with such low specs. I guess they will go on a fire sale like the silly web os machines they sold a couple of years back.
HP always made the best far back, like the HP-35, 45, 41cx and then PCs of high quality.
Now HP apparently seeks to blend in with the masses of the cheapest laptop designs on the Asian continent.
Who is going to match Apple for top-of-the-line laptops, which a professional can use for 5-6 years before replacement?
You won't kill my dreams HP!
The first android on my lap top must be Cherry 2000!
> Android is "a lot cheaper for HP to implement in a laptop; ChromeOS, in contrast, comes with more stringent system requirements that would cost HP a bit more."
It looks like sweet hardware. They may have good intentions re costs. But that's not how to define a product. The laptop form factor works against the touch interface by putting the screen just a little too far away. It also completely destroys the ability to hold a device like a sheaf of paper or clipboard.
The other side of the coin is that a browser-based UI is well-suited to using a pointing device instead of (or in addition to) touch.
Could have been a great Chromebook.
I wrote parts of this stuff
In Nov/2012 I bought an HP 15.6" AMD based laptop (notebook?) with 8GB DDR3 RAM, 500GB HDD, USB3, Win7 Home Premium, and Beats Audio for $399.00 Canadian. This was retail price.
Upon purchase, I wiped and installed Funtoo Linux, and have since replaced the HDD with an SSD. It does everything I need it to do. I regularly get 4.5 hours battery life of continuous use. Runs a tad warm but I don't use it on my lap so its fine.
My point is, this is android based notebook is limited as a general purpose machine, and costs more than I paid for mine a year and a half ago.
I do understand is had a touchscreen, larger battery and built in flash based memory, and that can drive costs uo a bit, but in terms of general usefulness I don't think it will fly.
They will happily subsidize your hardware. Latest OS available from M$ plus free hardware evaluation and optimization on assembler level.
amd what? E1 or A6?
Feels like a missed oportunity to me. I guess the corporate lawyers killed it in fear of Apple. IMO.
Took long enough.
when I can pretty easily get a dual core i5 for $400? Or if I care about battery life a single core i3 for $299?
I can't help but wonder if these products are just HPs way of saying to Microsoft that they have alternatives to Windows.
Hi! I make Firefox Plug-ins. Check 'em out @ https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/youtube-mp3-podcaster/
If the boot loader is not encrypted I might buy one.
Samsung took back my unlocked bootloader because Google wants me to rent movies. They're both evil.
dunno, my dell is a fucking tank, its not as sexy as an apple but already 3 years old, been dropped twice in the airport and still acts and looks like brand new...
not to mention it was cheap to begin with
HP consumer laptops consistently worst in reliability tables. Why would you buy one.
http://www.engadget.com/2009/1...
"Don't belong. Never join. Think for yourself. Peace." V.Stone, Microsoft Corporation
Nothing wrong with android on a phone or tablet, but a laptop? I cant see it being of much value tacking on a permanent keyboard.
People will want more functionality with a laptop than this will give. is chrome OS the right choice? I donno, but Android sure isn't.
---- Booth was a patriot ----
offer valid till old stocks last ?
I guess this was inevitable... After this strategy worked for Samsung in differentiating itself from Apple's iPhone, someone was bound to try to see if the same strategy would work against the iPad.
I think that what HP missed in Samsung's game plan was that they built their G-series phones as premium devices... size alone was not enough
Selling a whole bunch of cheap devices will get one more market-share, and very little else.
Who is going to match Apple for top-of-the-line laptops, which a professional can use for 5-6 years before replacement?
Pretty much anyone with a flat top on the screen.
Close the lid, put the order on the lid, walk to the table, and serve the coffee.
Wouldn't a tray be lighter though?
May be the ChromeOS spec is more stringent, but not on the hardware side. May be ChromeOS prevents HP from loading it up with crapware and nagware. Android might allow HP to insinuate itself in the Apps and marketplace more deeply. The HP bean counters would see it as "value" and "potential revenue stream". What the PHBs never realize is, if enough people do not buy that device the revenue stream will be as dry as a wadi in the Sahara.
sed -e 's/Chuck Norris/Rajnikant/g' joke > fact
My beef with trying to use Android on a desktop or laptop form factor device is this requirement in the Android Compatibility Definition Document: "Devices MUST NOT change their reported screen size at any time." This rules out use of any nontrivial window manager, despite that the screen of a laptop or tablet is big enough for 2 to 4 phone apps at once.
One reason would involve running applications that are available for Android but not for X11/Linux.
I would buy a Lenovo Yoga 2 running Android. Great form factor, but crippled by Windows 8.
What do those extra 8640 pixels do?
... see if the same strategy would work against the iPad.
iPad was only relevant in one country, and since then even with some distribution chain *wink* stock readjustments...the market is simply leaving Apple behind, who aren't even maintaining growth in a hyper-growth market. Competing with Apple in the tablet market is just stupid...Best just to leave Microsofts Surface part III to have a go. It isn't 2013 anymore.
call us when your dell is 6 years old
PS: I don't reply to ACs.
Why would anyone trust Google on a laptop.
All I heard was: Heavily customized version of Android that won't see any upgrades.
The Tegra K1 has a desktop-like GPU (similar in architecture to the GTX 780) and is supported by both nouveau and the nvidia proprietary driver, so it would be a more proper chip to run real desktop linux in addition to (or in place of) Android.
The article is wondering whether the USB is 2.0 or 3.0. Tegra 4 does not have PCI Express lines, so it's 2.0.
oh sorry about that, the Tegra 4 includes USB 3.0 right on the chip.
That's less than $6.71 at today's exchange rates - that is very cheap, I'll get one at that price.
My other UID is three digits.
No one cares what the underlying OS is anymore, which is WHY Android exists in the first place. Another Linux based laptop? So what? And it will run Candy Crush and Angry Birds? Wow.
ChromeOS, in contrast, comes with more stringent system requirements that would cost HP a bit more.
In other words, this thing is going to be really slow if you try to use it for serious work. Why? Because HP is cheap and doesn't want to shell out for decent components. That and/or they like their locked down bootloader.
There are additional hardware requirements on a ChromeBook:
o No COTS keyboard (ChromeOS requires a custom keyboard)
o Work required on the TP bus input lines and power to deal with wake-from-trackpad
o EC modifications for wake-from-trackpad, including some tricky PS/2 state machine work
o EC modifications including additional GPIO pins and a couple of resisters and capacitors, if the parts PS/2 bus is on the C3 power rail (i.e. there's some issues with C-state transitions if the PS/2 or I2C bus for the TP are powered down in sleep state)
o EC state machine modifications for prioritization of traffic from the keyboard matrix "pretend" i8051/i8042 parts to provide a muxed PS/2 bus with e.g. a Synaptics PS/2 trackpad; specifically, HP's EC parts tend to drop keystrokes under certain conditions, and the typical solution to the hardware problem in the EC firmware is to stop TP input for a period of time following keyboard input - same solution used by Toshiba - and it means you can't use both keyboard and mouse in games, unless you use an external mouse in place of the TP
o If the TP remains powered in sleep state, for wake-from sleep, as part of the C1 rail, then there is an associated batter cost, even if you chat with it to clock it way down; this implies either clam-shell it shut to turn off the TP, -OR- a bigger battery to achieve the same battery life. FWIW, that also means that the C1 line to the TP power has to be gated by *another* GPIO line from the EC
o Wake-from-trackpad also has some implications for BIOS default state on initial boot or wake-from-sleep (C1->C3 state transition); most BIOS are broken in this regard (hint: try holding the TP click down when booting some time, and see how long it takes).
o A TPM to implement the "trusted boot" in a way that it can't be worked around in software (Microsoft Trusted Boot can work without TPM hardware, but can be worked around in software if you are diligent).
o There's a known defect in I2C bus sharing on some TPMs when doing back-to-back transactions, which means that they tend to demand their own I2C bus.
o The last HP ChromeBook was withdrawn from the market due to power supply overheating problem (this is public information), which had to do with the charging circuit and the power draw in sleep state, while leaving certain peripherals powered on that aren't on in a normal Windows sleep state.
o CoreBoot and u-boot for the BIOS (technically, you could flash both and select which one in a setup screen, but that means higher NVRAM costs for the storage of the BIOS)
So... a lot of software work in a sensitive system area, a potentially larger battery, a potentially higher per unit cost for the keyboard, a potentially higher per unit cost for the TP, a modified BIOS and other BIOS costs, and a TPM and maybe an extra I2C line, plus a potential mod to the charging circuit.
Full disclosure: I did the EC state machine work and worked with Synaptics and Samsung on the EC and hardware modifications for a number of TP and keyboard issues, as well as other of the above issues, for ChromeBooks from Samsung, Acer, and other companies while part of the ChromeOS team at Google. Basically, they'd need to make my recommended list of partner modifications to their hardware and firmware in order to build a successful ChromeBook.
I suspect that they will find the android OS not very satisfactory as well, but with a standard keyboard and other features, they can use COTS parts for most things, and pop the rip cord and switch to Windows on the thing if they absolutely had to do so.
call us when your dell is 6 years old
My latitude D520 was assembled from parts of many other dead Latitudes. I call it frankentop. Runs reliably. Take it everywhere. Ugly as sin. Dell latitudes are more rugged and parts are cheaper and more interchangable in my opinion. The cheap consumer Dells are more problematic.
I also have a nearly 5 year old quad core HP laptop, hasn't given me any problems other than a noisy fan that stopped being noisy after a while on it's own.
The best is a 13 year old IBM thinkpad, still going. This thing is so old it has USB 1.0. But, truly, no-one on Slashdot will be impressed by that - it isn't unusual.
Now, today, I would be a little hesitant to buy a new HP laptop. I would lean more towards a Lenovo or a Asus.
And what's with this stupid BEATS AUDIO crap? Just give me a decent sound chip that reproduces the sound and doesn't process it FOR me! I've had a beats audio HP laptop, to me it sounds like crap.
And get off my lawn.
Flappinbooger isn't my real name
...as opposed to gay Linux you might ask? No, I mean a regular distro like Ubuntu/Mint as opposed to Android/ChromeOS.
If keeping things cheap by not purchasing a Windows license is a factor in this device, why not slap on something like Ubuntu or Mint? It'd cost the same but provide greater utility in the form of proper "fat" applications and increased power and capability from a regular OS as opposed to a cloud-focused or touch-focused system.
Honestly, a Linux distro on a laptop has about as much chance of working as Android on a laptop. It'd be hard enough to sell in the first place so why not go for broke?
Who is going to match Apple for top-of-the-line laptops, which a professional can use for 5-6 years before replacement?
(fanboi warning)
Origin PC. I'm north of four years on my EON-17. Yes, it's a Clevo chassis, but they're easily serviceable, and fiercely supported. For the most part, Macbooks are cheaper than the base units of each series, and if you're looking for the less-expensive route to the same thing, go with Sager - Sager is the unaffiliated,"drop-ship the hardware" Clevo rebadger, and Origin is more the "we have your back no matter what, and will custom paint your rig and install your software and test it out for you" option, with each company's pricing reflecting these respective stances. Either way, if you can deal with the weight and the less-than-stellar battery life, and you like laptops that make tinkering possible, and money isn't a consideration, then they're your answer. I don't work for them, and I don't own their stock, but I'll never buy a laptop from anyone else.
I've been using Android x86 for a while on an old spare laptop and, generally speaking, it's worked pretty well! Surprisingly many Android games don't seem to like it (swipe gestures don't seem to map well to a mouse), and apps that rely on portrait orientation are annoying, but for general web browsing it's been fine.
hopefully it will be better than when my macbook turned 6 after two motherboard replacements and a keyboard that hardly functions
That currently seems to be Lenovo, decent top end machines with excellent specs (though you pay through the ring for them). Asus make some high quality lightweight machines too. I would not recommend a HP laptop to anyone nowadays in any of their ranges.
My current Lenovo W520 is going is just over 3 years old now (16GB RAM, i7, Dual SSD's). I have an older W500 as well which is almost 6 years old now and it is also still happily working and still quite powerful (8GB, Core 2 Duo). The Lenovo's are mostly butt ugly but they do seem to last quite well.
My Lenovo X201 is pretty much 4 years old now, and still in fantastic condition. I did have to replace the CPU fan, but the bearings in a fan can go out on any model/make/manufacturer of anything, so I can't fault Lenovo on that.
Just give me a decent sound chip
And speakers (if you use them).
Branded audio isn't necessarily bad (though I gather beats is).
My SO has one of those thin Asus laptops (Zenbook). It came with Bang & Olafsson branded audio which we both thought was a massive gimmick. But it had all the other features she wanted (thin, light, quite powerful, decent battery life, runs Linux fine etc) so she got it anyway.
Well, turned out to be head and shoulders the best laptop speakers I've ever encountered. Her previous laptops were macs, and this one is very substantially better.
SJW n. One who posts facts.
Cool, thanks for the heads-up on that, will have to look into it. Always looking for a solid laptop to recommend if nothing else.
Flappinbooger isn't my real name
Panasonic Toughbooks are nearly indestructible. The newer ones looks like normal laptops too, not like the old chunky ones. They are very popular in Japan where they are sold under the Let's Note name, and you can pick up ex-corporate used ones for a bargain price (same with Thinkpads). They cost maybe 20% more than other similar spec machines but will pay for themselves by lasting longer.
const int one = 65536; (Silvermoon, Texture.cs)
SJW, n: "Someone I don't like, and by the way I'm a fuckwit" - AC
The last two laptops I got were about $400-500 and I'm a power user and usually only pick out machines with dedicated, non-apu gpu's (though I'll take those, along with the dedicated one, for longer power hauls)
I expect an android laptop to cost no more than the top of the line tablet which today runs about $100 with a quad core, gps, IPS HD+ display, 7" screen and 8 hour battery (at least)
Please tell me why anyone will buy this over a $250-300 chromebook that can do about the same thing, but is bigger.
The constant size requirement does not apply to use of a plugged-in display as a second monitor to display noninteractive video, as opposed to using it to display apps themselves. But if the device uses the screen for running apps, the device has to scale the apps such that the apps think they're running on a screen with the same size and density as the internal screen. See section 7.1.6 of the CDD linked above.
I recently shopped for laptops for home and for the office and I specifically excluded HP because of that ridiculous Beats Audio logo.
Not only is the logo tacky and unprofessional, it demonstrates that part of my purchase price was taken for something of no value whatsoever.
Kriston
After having to replace laptops with stuck pixels far too many times, I like the idea of Sager/Clevo laptops. They guarantee no stuck pixels on delivery and for a few extra dollars they will guarantee no stuck pixels for a period of time. That's pretty important when you're spending hundreds or thousands of dollars on something you have to look at for most of the day, every day.
Kriston
The question is: why make a better Android machine, when the applications are so needlessly weak?
The only word processor on Android that can make facing quotes, isn't even really native: Androoffice.
I am growing tired of seeing blurry text at the bottom of the page form while I surf.
No, I want to use SD cards for storing data. It's not application data, it's mine!!!
With 2GB of memory, you should be able to paint/edit images that are 3x4 feet @300dpi, but with most paint programs and editors, you couldn't edit an image from a $500 Nikon D3200. Most editors are limited to 2048 or 4096 images because the use the GPU for rendering. The only large image editor I have seen is Cloverpaint, and well, it's not quite the user interface I want.
Blah-blah application needs to read your penis or breast size.
https://www.youtube.com/c/BrendaEM
The Zenbook (UX21 in this case) has been very good. The main problem is that the wireless reception is quite poor, probably due to the all metal case.
Other than that it's been very good. Excellent audio, good screen brightness, decent keyboard, well put together, light. Generally a very solid machine.
SJW n. One who posts facts.
I have a samsung series 7 gamer laptop and the speakers on it are great! Even has a (albeit tiny and mostly useless) "subwoofer" in there.
If patriotism is racist, is racism patriotic?
I bought my Asus laptop back in 2009 for $500 and it still runs better than my new Sony laptop which cost me $1400.
Who is going to match Apple for top-of-the-line laptops, which a professional can use for 5-6 years before replacement?
Probably the Lenovo Thinkpad T-series is still up to snuff. Build quality on a recent T440 purchase is pretty good.
Personally, I'm still using a T61p from mid-2007. Purchased it with a 4-year warranty and made sure to use that warranty during the 4th year to get worn out bits replaced.
Wolde you bothe eate your cake, and have your cake?
T42p, decade old, still going strong. I use it as my holiday workhorse, it goes everywhere I wouldn't want to take an expensive new laptop.. Backpacked Asia, north America and Europe.. Love it.
You're holding it wrong...